Comics and Graphic Narratives MLA Forum

The Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum invites papers addressing the intersection between comics and sports, athletics, or competitive games. Between the 2026 World Cup and the upcoming 2028 Summer Olympics, Los Angeles finds itself in the spotlight as an international sports hub. As such, we are interested in arguments that explore comics and sport alongside various critical themes, including but not limited to embodiment, class, disability, gender, sexuality, nationalism, race, religious identity, or exploitation. Among other questions, panel participants might ask: How might the medium of comics specifically tell stories of sports or athleticism? What are the representative or formal challenges of depicting sports inRead More →

A collaboration between the Comics and Graphic Narratives Form and the Children’s and Young Adult Literature Forum, this panel examines migration in comics and graphic narratives for children and young adults. Images of children are frequently mobilized to solicit empathy for the plight of migrants and to call attention to the inhumane treatment they face on behalf of hostile borders and nation states. In the circulation of these sometimes sensational images, the narratives and perspectives of children themselves are often hidden from view. This panel seeks papers that explore complex representations of migrant youth in children’s and YA comics and graphic narratives. We are especiallyRead More →

We invite participants for a roundtable where each person will perform a sustained close reading of a single page from the comics of Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez—collectively known as Los Bros Hernandez. For more than four decades, the Hernandez Brothers have shaped the landscape of alternative comics through Love and Rockets and related projects, crafting formally inventive, politically astute, and emotionally resonant stories grounded in the textures of everyday life. From Gilbert’s magical-realist Palomar cycle to Jaime’s long-running “Locas” narratives set amid the punk and working-class subcultures of Los Angeles to their various independent projects, their work has redefined what comics can do asRead More →

Please note: This is a proposed, not a guaranteed, session, co-sponsored by the forum on Comics & Graphic Narratives and Adaptation Studies for MLA 2026. It is contingent on approval by the MLA Program Committee. All prospective presenters must be current MLA members by April 1, 2025. Comics have a long history with the transformative practices of adaptation. The medium’s earliest years saw characters like Krazy Kat, the Shadow, and Superman hurling from the pulps to comics to animation, radio, and film. Meanwhile, long-running comics series such as Classics Illustrated, and recent graphic novelizations of popular fiction and educational material continue to extend the reach of canonical worksRead More →

This session is a guaranteed session sponsored by the forum on Comics & Graphic Narratives for MLA 2026. All prospective presenters must be current MLA members by April 1, 2025. In their introduction to Crucial Comix’s recent anthology Cartoonists for Palestine, editors Yazan al-Saadi, Syah Mirk, Andy Warner, and Tracy Chahwan urge that, “in the face of calamity, artists still have a role to play” (4). While the editors speak specifically to the “forced displacement and killing of Palestinian people,” which has been ongoing since 1948 but recently become more visible, they also place their work within a transnational tradition of comics depicting genocide across timeRead More →

Canadian Comics Please note: This is a proposed, not a guaranteed, session, sponsored by the forum on Comics & Graphic Narratives for MLA 2026. It is contingent on approval by the MLA Program Committee. All prospective presenters must be current MLA members by April 1, 2025. Canadian Comics takes the location of the 2026 Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Toronto as the opportunity to examine the ways that comics and graphic narratives represent Canada within its national context. Discussions of nation and nationhood in Canada are inevitably complex, invoking the concerns of Indigenous peoples and of Canada’s component federations, issues surrounding linguistic and ethnicRead More →